


an exploration

by fugitives



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, I'm so sorry, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 21:15:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fugitives/pseuds/fugitives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a short drabble about my two faves getting it on</p>
            </blockquote>





	an exploration

He loves the way his name rolls off her tongue. He loves the mechanical lilt, the peaks and valleys in 'Major', followed by a gentle, but reverent teasing in 'Alenko'. Ever since the Commander had allowed him back on the Normandy, he's begun to read her in ways he'd never thought of before. And after she grabs his hand and pulls him close to her just in time to avoid detection from a Cerberus foot soldier, he imagined that he'd like to peel the layers away and read her the way a blind person reads a book.

It takes him a few weeks to muster up the courage on their next shore leave. A few drinks and an alcohol-fuelled romp through the Wards later, they giggle and stumble into a quarian love hotel--ironically, probably the cleanest place in the entire Citadel. He sobers up momentarily while the doorway disinfects him, wondering if it's wise, what they were doing--since the outcome would probably be highly unpleasant for both of them, but she takes his hand when the nozzles have stopped hissing and her mask is already off and she's the most beautiful thing he's seen since Vancouver in the fall. And when she runs her fingers down his torso in hushed silence, he hears her breathing sounds without the trill of the filters and the fullness of her person hits him squarely in the jaw.

He tips her chin up so that their glassy eyes meet, and she lowers her hood--it's symbolic among quarians; they always have to be careful about what they touch, what they eat, and to let their guard down around another person was to give them their trust, to let them in. He doesn't know that, but he feels the gravity of it, and as soon as she lets him help her remove her helmet and the rest of her suit, he shows her how much her invitation means to him.

They push and pull at each other--touching, grasping, feeling. The bumps and ridges of their individual bodies told the stories without the exchange of words. When he lowers his head to tease the narrow clefts that run down the side of her body with his tongue, he learns that the quarians were as craggy, rough, but as hardy and as beautiful as the geography of their homeworld. When she presses her cool, delicately cleaved lips to the indentations left by his L2 implants at the base of his skull, she learns what he's had to live with all his life; the constant reminder that he's both victim and survivor. When they come in each other, with their fingers digging deep into each other's flesh, clutching and clinging and desperate not to let go, they learn of how deep the aching, lonely voids that existed within them are.

And they learn that even though they're far from what they had in mind, they could fool themselves into thinking that for one night, at least, they can make each other whole.


End file.
